"Visions of America" Photo-Historian Joseph Sohm Selects ImageSpan's LicenseStream to Maximize the Value of his Portfolio Online

ImageSpan's LicenseStream Empowers Photographers and other Content Creators to Offer More Choice Online, Accelerate the Pace of Transactions and Drive Incremental Revenues

SAUSALITO, CA – August 11, 2009 — ImageSpan Inc., the creator of LicenseStream, the market-leading licensing and royalty payment automation platform for all media, today announced that photographer, writer and historian Joseph Sohm has selected LicenseStream to promote, protect, track, and create new revenue streams from his entire library of images, including his new book, "Visions of America: Photographing Democracy," helping him to maximize the value of his extensive portfolio online.

Sohm, whose "Visions of America" book and companion multi-media "Photo Symphony" narrated by Academy Award winner Clint Eastwood offers a sweeping portrait of life in the American democracy via an epic photographic journey across 50 states, said he chose LicenseStream because it allows him to make his entire catalog– not just the hits – available online for licensing. His work can now be found and licensed at http://voa.licensestream.com. Previously, Sohm has been able to offer only a subset of his images through stock agencies, which he says operate on the premise that a core set of images typically attract customers repeatedly.

"ImageSpan's LicenseStream empowers me to publish all of my photographs directly to my Web site and to global search engines, so that anyone in the world may find my search-optimized photos online and pay for them with a mouse click," said Sohm, whose "Visions of America" recently won the Gold medal for "Best Coffee Table Book" at the 13th annual Independent Publishing Awards in New York City. "By enabling me to reach image buyers more quickly and with many more choices than they'd get through a typical agency, LicenseStream helps me speed the pace of transactions and drive incremental revenues."

Web-based LicenseStream requires minimal investment and allows content creators to keep a much larger share of the royalties for each transaction — multiple times the 20 percent royalty fee offered by most major agencies. "That's a huge difference," said Sohm, "and it's why LicenseStream makes it affordable for me to shoot, metatag, process and offer my customers a greater variety of photographs online."

Sohm assembled tens of thousands of images taken over three decades to produce an insightful journey down the back roads and byways of the U.S. to produce "Visions of America" ($60.00; November 2009; Visions of America, LLC/Midpoint Trade Books Dist.) The companion multi-media "Photo Symphony" which premiered in Philadelphia just days after President Obama's inauguration earlier this year, is the basis for a series of "Visions of America" music videos Sohm is producing that will be released over the next twelve months on YouTube and other Internet social-networking sites. Sohm's work also has been published 50,000 times in a range of media outlets, including National Geographic, Time, Newsweek, New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, ABC, History Channel and MSNBC. In addition, Sohm's work has appeared in President Clinton's My Life and his Presidential Library, Bill Maher's Real Time, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, on John Grisham's "King of Torts," and on NBC's "Concert for America."

"Joseph Sohm is among the accomplished photographers who are selecting LicenseStream because it makes their content intelligent so it can move freely across the Web with defined ownership, rights and restrictions, enabling dynamic pricing based on use," said Iain Scholnick, chief executive officer, ImageSpan. "This innovation turns an image itself into the storefront. With LicenseStream's automated, Web-based services, photographers and other content creators also can cut content processing, licensing and royalty settlement costs while raising the visibility of their images to expand revenue opportunities. We are honored to help Joseph Sohm – and thousands of other premier photographers – leverage the power of the Web by providing world-class services that help them succeed in licensing their images online."

About ImageSpan

ImageSpan is the creator of LicenseStream, the market-leading licensing and royalty payment automation platform for all media types and businesses, from individual creators to enterprises. LicenseStream makes content intelligent, so it moves freely across the Web with defined ownership, rights and restrictions, enabling pricing based on use. By making content intelligent, LicenseStream creates new efficiencies and frees resources to develop new distribution and marketing channels to drive incremental revenues. ImageSpan's services include LicenseStream Creator, LicenseStream Business Edition, and LicenseStream Enterprise. Enterprise partners using the ImageSpan platform include Omnicom, Visible World and online advertising agencies. ImageSpan offers a number of delivery options including deployment through Adobe software. Founded in 2003 and based in Sausalito, California, ImageSpan is the exclusive provider of license registry services to the PLUS Coalition, the international, multi-industry standards body for image licensing. For more information, please go to www.imagespan.com or call (888) 921-1221.

ImageSpan Media Contact:

Laura Evenson
Director of Communications
ImageSpan Inc.

(415) 465-2711